Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supporting member separation method for separating a laminate formed by laminating a substrate and a support through an adhesive layer.
Background Art
In recent years, thinning, miniaturization, and weight reduction of electronic devices such as an IC card or a cellular phone have been required. To meet these requirements, it is required that thin semiconductor chips be also used as the semiconductor chips incorporated. For this reason, though a thickness (film thickness) of a wafer substrate which is a base of the semiconductor chip is 125 μm to 150 μm at present, it is known that a thickness of 25 μm to 50 μm is required to be used in the chip for the next generation. Therefore, to obtain the wafer substrate having the film thickness described above, a thinning step of the wafer substrate is essential.
Since the strength of the wafer substrate is reduced by thinning, to prevent a thinned wafer substrate from being damaged, during a manufacturing process, a structure such as a circuit is mounted on the wafer substrate while being automatically carried in a state in which a support plate is bonded to the wafer substrate. Then, after the manufacturing process, the wafer substrate is separated from the support plate. Therefore, various methods for stripping a support from a wafer have been used thus far.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2006-32506 (publication date: Feb. 2, 2006), a stripping method of a semiconductor wafer which is a method for stripping a semiconductor wafer which is stuck to a support having rigidity through a sticking material and which includes an insertion step of inserting an insertion member into a sticking material and a vibration step of applying vibration to a sticking material during the force application in the direction of stripping a semiconductor wafer from a support is described.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. H11-116046 (publication date: Apr. 27, 1999), a robot hand of a wafer carrying robot which is connected to an arm body which is rotatably disposed on a machine base and carries a wafer by gripping a wafer, and which is configured to have a gripping portion for gripping the outer peripheral surface of a wafer is described.